Menubar Apps

Aug 22, 2014

I love peeking over other people's shoulders and getting a glimpse of the apps and tools they use. Likewise, one of my preferred sections in tech podcasts is when they talk about their favourite apps or little gems that make their life and work easier, more efficient or simply more fun.

Somewhat spurred by Andreas' post, I decided it was about time I return the favour and let others peak over my shoulder. Who knows, maybe you'll discover your next favourite gem.

First and foremost, I like menubar apps, but that doesn't mean I like a cluttered menubar. That's where Bartender comes in. Not only does it allow me to relegate apps to a second menubar, but it also let's me completely hide icons such as the Notification Center or Spotlight.

Main Menubar

From left to right:

Tweetbot — I'm not the most active Twitter guy, by I do like to check in and when I do, I like Tweetbot;

Adium — Indispensable to stay in touch. I have it setup with an array of accounts, even Lync for work;

Fantastical — I just love this app. It's got a home on all my devices;

iStat Menus — I like to quickly glimpse at my resource usage. It lets me know if something is amiss. I have all other sensors stacked under that main one, so when I click on the CPU graph, I get a dropdown with detailed CPU info, Battery, Disk, Memory and other sensors.

Wifi — For quick and easy access.

Bartender Menubar

Once again, from left to right:

Command-C — This little app has been a Godsend for sharing data between iOS and OS X. You'll also need the iOS app;

Keyboard Maestro — I can't speak highly enough about this app and you should get it if you don't have it already. It's saved me countless hours already;

Onedrive — This is a recent addition since I decided to leverage the 1TB of storage I get with Office 365 subscription (my wife needs it, not me);

Droplr — I use it to shorten links and share quick screenshots and files;

OmniPresence — I'm using a few Omni Group apps and their sync has been quite reliable;

Dropbox — The cornerstone for so many of my workflows. All my important documents are somehow store on Dropbox.

Bartender allows me to easily arrange menubar icons, so I try and keep related apps together. You'll surely have noticed that utility apps are near the left whereas storage and sync apps are clustered together on the right. No real reason for this except maybe a small semblance of order.

There are a plethora of apps that often are in my menubar, but given I don't use them that often, I open them only when needed.